1. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to computer systems and in particular to software partitions in computer systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Software partitions is a new construct utilized to divide up resources of a single computing device (or server), with a single operating system instance into multiple, individually addressable and accessible partitions. With software partitions on a single computing device, different clients/users may be access shared services and/or resources of the same computing device, via different software partitions. Each client/user sees the software partition as a standalone device, having a separate instance of the global operation system, and complete with the device's own set of unique IP address, mail, telnet and other service.
Normally for such partitions, the entire file system data is stored on disks, which are local to the computing device. The partitions can be booted, accessed and shutdown from the local disks, similar to a standalone system. Such implementation does not allow mobility of software partitions from one computing device to another. For mobile software partitions, the entire file system has to reside on a remote file system, such as a network file system (NFS). Such partitions cannot be booted locally and has to boot off of the NFS.